The Country of the Pointer Firs, Sarah Orne Jewett’s masterpiece, established her among the consummate stylists of nineteenth-century American fiction. Composed in a series of beautiful web-like sketches, the novel is narrated by a young woman writer who unfolds a New England idyll rooted in friendship, particularly female friendship, weaving stories and conversations, imagery of sea, sky and earth, the tang of salt air and aromatic herbs into an historically significant ‘fiction of community’ in which themes and form are exquisitely matched. This edition, introduced by Alison Easton, also includes ten of Sarah Orne Jewett’s short stories, among them ‘The Queen’s Twin’, ‘The Foreigner’ and ‘William’s Wedding’.